“Alberto, I’m afraid I haven’t got much of an appetite tonight,” I say, without saying why.
The white tangle of his eyebrows rears back, and he’s about to start persuading, insisting, but then he intuits my mood and stands down. “Mind if I take a load off for a moment and join you?” he says. Younger than I am, he is still categorically old, and he lowers himself into the seat with caution. “It’s not because you are too sad, now, is it?”
“Not exactly,” I say.
“There is something about the year’s end that leads to a taking of stock that can lead in turn to melancholy. Isn’t that so?” he says, candlelight from the red votive holder on the table flickering over his wrinkled face. “There is at least for me.”
“It can tame one’s appetite,” I say.
“For me, a way to handle that sadness is by being a Catholic,” he says, and I laugh. “I know it sounds maybe crazy,” he says, “but here is what I mean: The turn of the year is the time of resolutions, yes? Makes me feel like a confession. Like the sacrament of reconciliation. The examination of conscience, the contrition, the admission, and—eventually, maybe, if you’re lucky—the feeling of absolution following the penance.”
A waiter comes by, and I order a glass of Chianti. After he’s gone, I say, “I’ll drink to that, Alberto. And that was rude of me—should we have ordered you one? To toast?”
“Nah, Lillian, I’m working,” he says, waving a hand to brush the suggestion away. “But you, you celebrate.”
I do not say that I feel uncelebratory. Rather, “It’s also a matter of personality, right? That feeling you’re describing. Important to, and practiced by, those who are already predisposed to lists and rituals.”
“Ah, Lillian, Lillian, exactly, exactly,” says Alberto. “You and me, we’ve always been simpatico.”
“Haven’t we?” I say. “You’ve always made the city feel even more like home—almost thirty years now. It’s the year after next that’s the big one for you, isn’t that right? What will you do to celebrate? Thirty years is the pearl anniversary, if memory serves. Oyster specials, maybe?”
“It won’t be me who decides,” says Alberto, eyes down at the white tablecloth, not meeting mine. “I didn’t want to tell you, Lillian, but I won’t be here for that. We’re selling the place. To my nephew, so it’s not going to close. But we’re leaving this summer. Me and Fabiola are moving to Palm Beach to be near Al.”
“But Al’s running the restaurant down there just fine by himself, isn’t he?” I say.
“Of course he is,” says Alberto, looking up at me with brown eyes that seem faded, like mud that’s turned back to dirt in the sun. “I taught that kid everything he knows. He’s expanding the Grimaldi empire. But he’s expanding it to places we actually want to spend our twilight.”
“New York City is the place to be,” I say, blindsided, sounding like a ludicrous tourism bureau.
“Lillian, it was, but it’s not anymore,” says Alberto. “How to put it to a poet? It’s like in Dante. If he’d lived up to now, and wanted to add a Tenth Circle to Hell, he could call it New York. And the first ones he could throw in would be that Subway Vigilante and those guys he shot. Let ’em rot together forever.”
“Forgive me, Alberto,” I say, “but that decision sounds a little bit irrational. Are you sure?”
“Rationally, Lillian, business hasn’t been so great lately. There aren’t so many three-martini lunchers anymore. The businessmen with their fat expense accounts and their Diners Club cards are thinning out.”
“But what about your loyal regulars?” I say, gesturing around at the other tables, slowly starting to fill with patrons, like grains of sand in an hourglass.
“Not so many of those, either, as there used to be,” he says, then smiles. “Even you aren’t ordering dinner.”
“But I do have this wine,” I say, making myself take a sip of the Chianti, making myself smile back. “And I’ll leave a gargantuan tip.”
“You always do. You’re a peach, Lily, a true friend. It’s not personal, you know that. It’s just time.”
“I know,” I say. “I hate time.”
“Me too,” he says, lifting himself from the table, putting a sandpapery hand on mine. “I have to go see about the other tables now, but you come find me before you go, Lillian, yes? And I’ll see you out.”
The betrayal I feel as he walks back toward the hostess stand is crimson and grand and unjust. How could he? How could Fabiola? How could they? But they are not mine to keep. Nothing is mine.
I drink my Chianti and watch the other diners, none of them alone the way I am. And isn’t this key to the feeling of being alone—the sense that no one is like you?